I was in my apartment and I sorta feel like the floor and the walls were shaking. I was wondering if it was just me, like I was crazy dizzy or something, but I have a ton of necklaces hung up on a rack and they were swaying back and forth, so I knew it was an actual Thing and not just in my head.

So my thought process was like, “Uh… is this an earthquake? …nah!… well… let’s see how long it lasts, aren’t earthquakes supposed to last for like 30 seconds?” It lasted like 10 seconds. “OK so it couldn’t’ve been an earthquake, it must have been something in the building… Well, maybe, or like a far off explosion or something?” I had the news on anyways so I looked at the TV for a minute to see if it said anything, and it was just more footage of Libyans shooting guns in the air. So I’m like, “No… if it was a big earthquake they’d’ve said something by now. Let’s see… construction? I didn’t hear anything… Whiskey’s bouncing around but a little kitten couldn’t’ve hit the wall hard enough to shake it for that long… It’s gotta be some sort of construction on the building.” I was just leaving to go to my neighborhood cafe, so I looked around as I walked outside. There were a lot of men in vests who looked like they were pruning the trees in the park and they were all standing around talking to each other, so I thought maybe they had felled a big tree and that shook the ground. I didn’t see any better explanation so I walked on minding my own business.

Until right before I crossed the street to the cafe, a crazy Spanish guy came up to me like, “Miss! Miss! Excuse me, Miss!” and I was in a good mood and he didn’t sound creepy (crazy and creepy are different) so I responded and he was like, “I heard we just had an earthquake!!!” LOL, I guess he just wanted to tell somebody!! I usually hate crazy people on the street but this time I was like, “Wow, thanks for telling me, I thought I was going crazy!”

When I walked into the cafe it had apparently just come on CNN and the whole cafe was deadly silent and staring at the TV, so I burst in with, “That was my first earthquake!!!!!!” Somebody laughed but I immediately felt bad in case like thousands of people had died or something. But they hadn’t. I bet they felt it real good at the cafe, with all those glasses and wine bottles to rattle around.

Anyways, I was so excited to have finally experienced my first earthquake, and very glad it was so mild.

Now there is this freaking hurricane. I’m not in an evacuation zone. I totally wouldn’t even care EXCEPT it’s on the night of my going away party. And this was gonna be like the biggest show of the year. EVERYBODY was going to be there, we’d practiced REALLY hard, learned a new song just for this gig. And that’s the night the hurricane is supposed to hit. Even if the show is on, probably 10% of the people who were going to come will actually make it. That’s bad enough. Then I found out that if we have so much as a tropical storm, my drummer will not be able to leave work. See, he works at LaGuardia for the Port Authority, and he told me ages ago that if there’s a snowstorm he has to be at work, so we can’t count on him on snow days. But I did not know that applied to floods as well.

I do NOT want to do my BIG GOING AWAY SHOW without a drummer. I already refused to do it without a guitar player (avoiding me playing guitar myself), no way in hell it’s happening without a drummer. There are big gigs and small gigs. The small ones I’m totally happy improvising and throwing together whoever is available. For the big ones, the ones that the most people are coming to and where we need to make the best impression, like my CD release party, we need the whole fucking band. I do not want people, especially people who are hearing us live for the first time, to associate me and my music with an unplugged, singer-songwriter sound.

There is a very good chance that the subways will be shut down starting Saturday afternoon.

What’s driving me crazy is the fucking media. I understand that they blow everything out of proportion because that’s how they get ratings and sell papers. But in this case I really need an accurate idea of what’s going on and what the chances are of what happening so I can make a plan. Like, yeah, of course the news is going crazy about forced evacuations and public transportation shut-downs, because that’s exciting and it gets us all worked up and watching the news more. I get it. But I really can’t afford for myself, my bandmates, their bosses, or my fans to get excited over this for no reason.

After hours of waffling over what to do and back-and-forth with my bandmates, I finally called Frank to voice my concerns. As I expected, he had a “The show must go on” attitude. If the show ends up being cancelled (Otto’s is in forced evacuation zone 2, which means even if it’s just a category 2 hurricane they will be evacuated), he’ll rebook it elsewhere ASAP, and I know he can do it. I added that I would like him to find a back-up plan for us for Monday or Tuesday in case our drummer can’t make it, and he said he’d look into it.

When Danny at the rehearsal studio first pointed out that the hurricane was supposed to come the day of our gig, I was upset because I thought that meant no one would come. I once played a birthday gig at Otto’s during the biggest Nor’easter of the year, and hardly anyone came because of the rain. But now I’m more worried that we’ll do our “big show” with no drummer. I’d rather 10 people hear us play with the whole band than 50 people hear us play acoustic. Especially since so many of our sets have been stripped down that I have plenty of fans who have never heard the whole band live. I want them to hear the music as it’s supposed to sound one time before I leave.

As it stands right now, we are on for Sunday. If it gets rained out, the show will be rescheduled, hopefully for Monday or Tuesday (as I’m moving Wednesday). If the show goes on but the drummer can’t come, hopefully we will have a booking for Monday or Tuesday and that will be the official going away party. If that’s the case, whoever can make it will play Sunday as a stripped-down set, as a warm-up gig for the big party. If we can’t get a full band gig in before I leave, I’d prefer not to play Sunday at all, as I want to avoid that being the going away party and leaving people with a watered-down version of our music in their ears.

So right now we are still planning on Sunday, but holding Monday and Tuesday nights in case of emergency. So hopefully see you Sunday? But stay tuned, I’ll post updates!